Perhaps that's what it comes down to. That's what the conservatives and defenders of Capitalism would have us believe.

Or perhaps there is just something inherently unfair and unjust about it.

Yes, it is easy to dislike some of the wealthy in our supposedly capitalist nation. And the easy response is that the United States is not a purely capitalist nation, certainly not as Adam Smith envisioned capitalism and not in the sense that the Austrian economists believed in and promoted either a minimally-regulated free market or pure laissez-faire model. But, trying yet again to explain why the U.S. is not a free market isn't an actual response to this list of complaints.

Celebrity: There are favored celebrities in all systems, because human nature seems to include treating "stars" differently. Whether it is China, the old Soviet Union, France, or Northern Europe, there are celebrities that seem to be indulged in various ways. In the U.S. we know that stardom does affect legal cases, medical care, and more. Sure, the random star is convicted of crimes from drug possession to murder (yep, it happens), but we also know that celebs get away with a lot. Having friends from China, Russia, and many other nations, I can report that there are indulged (spoiled) celebrities everywhere. The sense of entitlement knows no political or economic bounds. However, the U.S. equating wealth with celebrity is sad and leads to particular issues. (This is also a problem in Italy and Greece, I've learned from friends living in those nations, where the wealthy openly avoid taxes and commit crimes.)

Inequality "Destroys" Democracy: Economic inequality might be to blame for some problems in our nation, but other nations are suffering an even faster decline in respect for politicians and democracy. By definition, democracy is based on the "free market of ideas" and the ideal (often nothing more than an ideal) that the collective is wiser than one person. That's crowdsourcing at its most extreme, I suppose. Looking back through the presidents of the United States, we should admit that democracy leads to some odd choices. Porn stars and comics are winning elections in Europe, and nationalist parties are rising, too. Sadly, we have extreme racially biased nationalists winning parliamentary seats throughout Europe.

The French, in particular, have little faith in their leaders, democracy, socialism, capitalism, or anything else. Maybe that's realistic. Clearly, people just lose faith, period, in large governments to do the "right" things. Of course, we also all differ on what is "right" for governments.

Survival of the Fittest: Again, not a capitalist problem. Nations like the old Soviet Union and Revolutionary China segregated the "fit" from the "unfit" in the worst of ways. Socialism and Progressivism in the United States have a history of embracing eugenics at their worst and "meritocratic" segregation at their best. Even today, the European and Asian nations segregate students based on tests. That's actual "survival of the fittest" by promoting the best in various fields, not based on desire or passion for something but instead based on quantitative metrics that might benefit the society. You might love engineering, but a mediocre math ability won't permit you to pursue that dream in many nations. In the United States, passion can lead to a career choice.

The Attitude of the Fittest toward the Unfit: Again, that's extreme in some nations and regions that are culturally dissimilar to the United States. Some cultures that are far from capitalist and even further from democracies have extreme views on what constitutes "fitness" in their communities. Every culture values some traits and discriminates against others. Sad, but true.

Reality TV: It was called the Coliseum. The Circus Maximus. What's changed? Nothing…

Walmart: Every nation seems to have at least one huge economic power/threat. In Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands, the nationally owned (socialist) North Sea oil companies seem to get away with quite a bit. Wealth, or being the source of wealth, lets any organization (nationalized or not) get away with too much. In Russia and China, the power companies have ruined natural resources — with little or no ability of the public to fight horrific destruction of places and ways of life. In Venezuela, the nationalized oil industry is at least as bad as any capitalist corporations. And people forget that British Petroleum (BP), while privatized, remains a largely a pension-owned company. Companies with bad leadership and no morals are what they are. I believe that size leads to managers (corporate or civil service) not taking responsibility for the consequences of choices. The Three Gorges Dam? Chernobyl? Not good things, and not "capitalist" creations.

Capitalism Appeals to the Worst of Human Nature: No, humans stink in every system. Sorry, but history's tyrants have not been capitalists, they've been egomaniacal monsters. I don't blame communism, socialism, mercantilism, or any economic/political system for Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Mussolini, Mao, the Kim dynasty, Pol Pot, Pinochet, or any other monsters in human history. Dictators rise to power in every system: Hitler rose in a social democracy; the French coup d'état of 1851 was a response to democracy not "succeeding" fast enough (Prince Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte appealed to "equality" of course).

Envy? I can't argue that the United States' crony-capitalism and its marketing-based demand system (which, again, is not the capitalism of Smith) works and thrives by encouraging envy. We are encouraged to want things and to envy those with more and better things. Consumerism is not capitalism, but it is a form of capitalism and does depend on a market economy. Curiously, China is trying to create consumerism to foster a less export-dependent economy. Buy, buy, buy, even if you do not need. That's a problem, and one the culture of the United States helped create and promote.

When any society forgets basic decency, it should collapse. But, we already know that some horrible nations have survived for decades, even centuries, by pillaging and plundering both the people and the resources of this planet.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

[NOTE Augusut 8, 2017: The marginal and effective U.S. Tax rates mentioned in this 2011 post have been supported by research conducted by Thomas Piketty (Paris School of Economics), Emmanuel Saez (UC Berkeley and NBER), and Gabriel Zucman (UC Berkeley and NBER). These economic researchers are well-respected by progressives. Data are data, though we differ on interpretations. "Income" vs. "Wealth" presents much of the challenge, as wealth accumulates but is not taxed in the United States. Distributional National Accounts: Methods and Estimates for the United States published July 6, 2017, includes the following table:

As the table shows, the effective tax rate for the top 1 percent peaked at 45 percent of income in 1944-45. Unfortunately, the overall revenue intake of the United States kept growing and the burden has been falling most on the bottom 50 percent. Tax increases on the middle and lower classes reduce potential economic growth since these individuals spe…

Though the contemporary Republican Party has never been libertarian enough for me or many others focused on economic issues, we at least imagined the GOP would lead a President Trump, who came into office with no governing experience and a platform that was populist and nationalist.

The GOP has failed to do much practical at all. If you, like me, at least hoped Trump would be contained by party orthodoxy, the year has been nothing but disappointment after disappointment.

Civil Rights: Hard to think of anything the GOP or Pres. Trump has proposed with which I agree, from gender issues to voting rights, the GOP is allowing Trump to lead on these subjects — in the wrong direction.

Gay marriage should never have been a national issue. Private matters are private, between consenting adults. The libertarians and social conservatives will always be in conflict on these issues.

On voting rights, I am okay with a basic national ID standard, as is being implemented for the TSA via new d…

Map of U.S. Minimum Wage laws (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Minimum wage debates tend to overstate the estimated and real effects of any changes to the minimum wage in the Unites States. Most studies show a minor increase in a place with wages already rising has no significant effect on employment. But, there is a cost when wages rise quickly and there is an effect when wages fail to keep pace with the cost of living. The problem is that the minimum wage is not, contrary to any mythologies, the income of most adults with full-time work.

As the debates below suggest, there is a limit to what a local economy can bear in terms of wage growth. At the same time, we know that low wages also reflect jobs that can be or will be automated away in many instances. We are in a new era of creative destruction, with no real plan for the displaced workers without skills.

Allow me to provide an example of how silly on all sides the debate on wages is. Mark Perry gets the facts right in his piece on th…